Elizabeth Ann had to laugh when the ghost saw her face. He stared—he was Jim Bennett, one of the boys in her class.
“And I was so sure you were Mattie Harrison!” he ejaculated. “You’re about as tall as she is—there’s Mattie over there; she came as a gypsy girl.”
Elizabeth Ann opened the prize—it was a beautiful box of candy and she and Doris agreed that there couldn’t be a nicer box for two prize winners to share.
Roger had won a writing set—pen and pencil that matched. They were black and gold, and Roger—who had never had anything as nice in his life—was so pleased Elizabeth Ann thought surely Catherine would be glad he had won them.
But Catherine continued to be cross. She was so cross that her Aunt Nan was afraid she would spoil the party, and so allowed her to keep the prize she had won—a pen and pencil set, too—but for a girl. Aunt Nan said no hostess should win the prize at her own party, but Catherine was quite capable of sitting down and crying if she didn’t get her way, and that, of course, would be worse than letting her have the prize. If you can think of anything worse than a hostess crying at her own party, why we can not.
They played all the good old Hallowe’en games—ducking for apples, and trying to find the ring in a plate of flour and sailing walnut shell boats in the tub of water to see which sank and which stayed up. They threw apple peelings over their shoulders to see what initials were formed and they walked backwards with mirrors to see what they could see—and it must be admitted that most of them didn’t see anything at all.
Then, just as Mattie Harrison suggested they might have another Virginia Reel—she said she wanted to hear Roger Calendar play again—there was a noise and clatter at the barn door that drew their attention to something just coming in.
“A witch!” shrieked the children. “It’s a witch.”
Goodness, it was a witch. She came in on her broomstick, her long wisps of white hair floating out from under her tall black hat. There was a light on the end of her broomstick and one of the boys whispered he supposed that was in case the traffic was heavy in the sky as she rode along.
“That’s exactly what I use that light for, young man,” croaked the witch, who certainly sounded as though she needed a cough drop. “On Hallowe’en, the sky is so full of witches it’s all we can do to find our way around without a collision. What are you doing here? Having a party?”